The Vespers - Live at The Station Inn

 The Vespers - Live at The Station Inn - Part 1

 The Vespers - Live at The Station Inn - Part 2

 

Join the fun December 12th at 1PM CDT when Nashville’s The Vespers visit the DittyTV Studios to perform. A band comprised of two pairs of siblings [the Cryar sisters and Jones brothers], The Vespers combine Americana roots with pop melody and rock & roll muscle that’ll have you humming in your favorite key right on in to 2015. Check out their single ‘Sisters and Brothers’ (via Paste Magazine).
Natives of Nashville, Tennessee, the Vespers began making their own kind of rootsy, southern stomp in 2009, throwing themselves into a music scene that was rich in history and high in competition. Playing as many as 115 shows a year and selling more than 10,000 copies of their second album, The Fourth Wall (2012), The Vespers found themselves at a crossroads. They could make another album of bluegrass-influenced folk music — a genre that had grown quite popular since the group’s early days — or they could throw some newer influences into the mix.
“We wanted to make a new sound, something people hadn’t heard from us before, and Sisters and Brothers came out of that desire,” says Phoebe Cryar. Over five years, the Cryars’ and Jones’ had laughed, fought, cried, smiled, learned about life and played their hearts out. Without the influence of a label or an A&R team, they’d learned to rely on each other, trusting few outside influences apart from the support of their own fans. Those fans had helped The Vespers through the hardest of times, becoming not only the band’s supporters, but their family, as well. The time had come for the Vespers to make an album birthed from the ups and downs of traveling in a band, an album that focused on the great things that can happen with the support of your literal and figurative sisters and brothers. The Vespers didn’t abandon their old sound for Sisters and Brothers; they just expanded it.
“Phoebe and I were fresh out of high school when we started the band,” Callie Cryar adds, thinking back to the days when they were teenagers working the 5 a.m. shift at a Nashville donut shop. “You’re never more vulnerable or unconfident than you are at that time. But in the years leading up this album, we all became more comfortable with each other, with our emotions, with ourselves. We became adults, and we started delving into some of the emotions that we wanted to make people feel. People want to feel when they listen. They want to feel something intense, and that’s the kind of album we hoped to record.”
Looking for the right collaborator to help them evolve, The Vespers turned to Paul Moak, a Grammy-nominated producer and accomplished songwriter who operates his own recording studio, Smoakstack, in south Nashville. Moak pushed the musicians to create music that was raw and real instead of polished and perfect. The goal wasn’t to sound flawless. It was to find imperfect performances that captured a genuine moment, performances that raised the hair on everybody’s arms. If a take didn’t evoke that sort of response, it was scrapped.
“We used to record our vocals over and over, separately, until every single note was perfectly correct,” Callie remembers. “But Sisters and Brothers was completely different. We wanted it to be raw. We realized there was more attitude and more emotion whenever Phoebe and I sang together, even with that slight element of imperfection.”
“Every time you make a record, you’re summing up where you’ve been for the last few years,” says Bruno Jones. “Our band went through some challenges in those years, but we also went through a lot of growth, both onstage and off. We came out of it and realized we still cared about each other.” Bruno adds, “Sisters and Brothers is a rallying cry for the band.” Indeed, Sisters and Brothers does feel like a battle cry. It’s an album about beating the system, banding together, taking care of those around you and focusing on what really counts.  From: https://dittytv.com/vespers-dittytv/

 

 

Uni and The Urchins - Clean

The course of history often seems wayward and chaotic. It’s the gum on the heel of your shoe that a homeless saint picks off and plops in his mouth to chew again. Uni and The Urchins grow underneath your fingernails when you sit next to your parents in Church, digging them into the soft flesh above your knee.
Uni and The Urchins dribble from the mouths of sidewalk sleeping drunks and slither into the throat of a politician to make him cough and loosen his tie. Uni and The Urchins were there during your first masturbation and first confession. Uni and The Urchins wake you up in the middle of the night. Parents of America, a new phenomenon has taken over our youth. Uni and The Urchins wage war on the apathy and digital narcissism of 1st world ignorance.  
It is a cult of one, a cult of infinity. Jack James is the voice, a slender boy from Texas with a penchant for glitter and Oscar Wilde, who came down from another planet to be the rock star of the future. David Strange is the sword, a grisled poet and carpenter who can build anything, writing sonnets and summoning demons on his guitar. Kemp is the brain, a crazed scientist who composes prog riffs and surrealist visuals, leading the three into the great abyss. But you are the hands. Go spread the message.  From: https://www.chimeramusic.com/artists/uni

Orchestra Of Spheres - 2,000,000 Years

Orchestra of Spheres is a wide-ranging collective from Wellington, New Zealand whose distinctive music crosses from disco and electro to kuduro and mbalax, from neo-psych to no wave, from kosmiche to prog, on instruments both formal and homemade.
The group’s members adopt outlandish pseudonyms and don equally far-out costumes, and their performances and recordings consist of ecstatic sonic rituals and peaceful, playful dance mantras. Making their full-length debut with ‘Nonagonic Now’ in 2010, the Orchestra continued to shift styles and group members on subsequent releases, including 2016’s ‘Brothers and Sisters of the Black Lagoon’ and 2018’s ‘Mirror’.
The group formed in the early, heady days of Wellington’s artist collective, the Frederick Street Sound and Light Exploration Society, in 2009. Early members included Baba Rossa (biscuit-tin guitar and sexomouse marimba), Zye Sosceles (electric carillon), Jemi Hemi Mandala (drums), and Mos Iocoss (keyboards and gamelan).
Their self-released debut EP, ‘Space Art Music’, appeared that same year, followed by the full-length ‘Nonagonic Now’ in 2010. ‘The Bad Spheres’ single appeared in March of 2011, and the‘Numbers‘ EP in June. Meanwhile, the U.K.’s Fire Records signed the group and re-released ‘Nonagonic Now’ later in the year. An intense and prolonged period of touring and recording ensued, during which time EtonalE joined on bass carillon and percussion. Fire released ‘Vibration Animal Sex Brain Music’ in December of 2013.
The group returned with its third album, ‘Brothers and Sisters of the Black Lagoon’, in 2016. The album featured drumming by Tooth, and Woild Boin also mixed and contributed to the recording. Along with percussionist Farmerboy and several guest musicians, Orchestra of Spheres recorded their fourth full-length, ‘Mirror’, and Fire released it in 2018.  From: https://www.firerecords.com/artists/orchestra-of-spheres/

Sundowners - Hummingbird

How do you all know each other, and when did you get started as a band?

Me and Niamh [Rowe, also vocals and rhythm guitar] have been mates for years – she showed me how to play guitar and I encouraged her to sing, so we started playing together doing covers at small gigs and that’s mostly where we found our style and learnt hamonies. Alfie [Skelly, lead guitar] saw us playing and he wanted a singer for his band at the time, so we went into practice and jammed “Run Away” by Del Shannon for about an hour. He never officially asked us to join but we just kept showing up. For a while we had another drummer and bass player who went on to play in other bands, and that’s when Tim an Jim joined. We’ve all been playing together now for just over a year.

How would you describe your music, if pushed?

Well i’d say there’s a definite influence of ’60s/’70s rock and roll but individually we’re all into lots of other eras and genres that come through. I mean we get the obvious ones like The Byrds but have also had a lot of people say some of the songs are like Blondie.

Who or what are your primary inspirations for music-making?

The Beatles as a band and solo artists, Tom Petty, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen and Oasis.

Where can we hear your music?

On our Facebook page, our SoundCloud and our MySpace. We also have some videos on YouTube. We’ve just recorded in Parr Street (Liverpool) our new single “Humming Bird”, to be released with a B-side, so listen out for that!

Which have been your most exciting gigs so far?

We played a great gig supporting Cat’s Eyes in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London but a close second has to be York – we played some dive and went down a storm with a load of students. We always enjoy supporting The Moons.

Got any more big gigs or festival dates coming up?

There’s no festivals planned this year but there’s plenty of gigs always popping up, mostly in Liverpool, Manchester and London. You can find out dates on the events page on our Facebook.

Are there any other up-and-coming acts that you’d like to recommend or give a shout-out to?

The Moons, Neville Skelly, By The Sea, Ren Harvieu, Cold Shoulder and The Sand Band. Also love Paul Weller’s new record!

From: https://rocksucker.co.uk/2012/05/interview-sundowners.html

The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony

"Bitter Sweet Symphony" is a song by the English rock band the Verve, released on 16 June 1997 by Hut Recordings and Virgin Records as the lead single from their third album, Urban Hymns. It was produced by Youth at Olympic Studios, London.
The Verve developed "Bitter Sweet Symphony" from a sample from a 1965 version of the Rolling Stones song "The Last Time" by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, adding vocals, strings, guitar and percussion. After a lawsuit by the Rolling Stones' former manager, Allen Klein, the Verve relinquished all royalties and the Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were added to the songwriting credits. In 2019, ten years after Klein's death, Jagger, Richards, and Klein's son ceded the rights to the Verve songwriter, Richard Ashcroft.
The music video features Ashcroft walking down a busy pavement in Hoxton, London, bumping into passersby. It was played frequently on music channels and was nominated for Video of the Year, Best Group Video and Best Alternative Video at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards. It has been parodied in television advertisements and other music videos.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony  

Rapunzel & Sedayne - The Railroad Boy (Died For Love)

Fleetwood, Lancashire-based Rachel McCarron and Sean Breadin are better known as Rapunzel and Sedayne. Following from their recent involvement in the well-regarded Oak, Ash and Thorn project, Songs from the Barley Temple is a new album mainly comprising traditional material with several new tracks from the duo. There is certainly plenty of material here with a total of 14 tracks featured.
Songs from the Barley Temple has an ethereal and haunting tone, medieval in spirit, yet sounding curiously contemporary at the same time. The songs feature skillful and powerful vocal harmonies with sparse instrumental accompaniments that create an occasionally disconcerting yet compelling landscape. Banjo, fiddle and cwrth (a medieval lyre) mesh well with the innovative use of a Korg Kaossilator synthesiser to provide interesting and distinctive drone effects.
Housecarpenter/ I Curse the Day showcases Rapunzel’s emotive vocals with background drones and instrumentals to create a truly eerie atmosphere. Riverdance weaves together strings and drones with harmonium to lend a timeless feel to a gloriously sung lament. In contrast, Outlaws is a far more modern piece, setting to music a 1930s poem by Bonnie Parker, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, whilst in Diver Boy Sedayne’s powerful vocals are given the opportunity to shine through. Never less than fully engaging, Songs from the Barley Temple is an album of rare quality.  From: https://brightyoungfolk.com/records/songs-from-the-barley-temple-rapunzel-and-sed

Pretenders - The Wait - Live 1980

After the complicated stomp of “Tattooed Love Boys,” side one of Pretenders went in a different direction, a slow instrumental with double entendre title of “Space Invader,” ostensibly named after a very popular arcade game of the time, highlighted by a big, rumbly Pete Farndon bass and out-of-nowhere guitar outbursts from James Honeyman-Scott that I absolutely loved. At the fade, they brought in some of the actual noises from the Space Invaders arcade game, which segued instantly to what might be my favorite song on Pretenders, the utterly incandescent “The Wait,” one of most exciting rock ‘n’ roll songs that anybody has ever performed.
I’ve often joked that Pretenders turned me from a boy into a man, and the moment Chrissie Hynde exclaimed “huuuuuuuhhhhh!” and the chittering, stuttering riff that dominates “The Wait” explodes out of the speakers is when I pretty sure it happened. (If it indeed, ever happened. Jury’s still out.) Coming after an initial outburst of guitars and drums that still hadn’t quite found a direction, it’s like Hynde is telling the song “follow me.” And boy does it ever. Weirdly enough, unlike most of the other songs on Pretenders (“The Phone Call” excepted, of course), the lyrics and singing on “The Wait” are more impressionistic and mixed lower, Hynde’s vocals becoming part of the song instead of dominating, everything being subsumed to the amazing riff (heretofore referred to as THE RIFF because I’ve been air-guitaring to it for nearly 40 years) at the heart of the song, spitting out the words to map the build up to THE RIFF’s explosion.

Said the wait child magic child work it on out now work it
The wait child pinball child pool hall child hurts
The wait child pacing child forth back now hurts
The wait child neon light late night lights hurt

And then, with Farndon picking up his bass and running away from the rest of the band as fast has he can, there’s a quick chorus while they all catch up to him and drag him back to THE RIFF.

Oh gonna hurt some child child
Gonna hurt some whoa my baby

After the second chorus, the guitars drop out and over a still on-fire Farndon and ever-sturdy Martin Chambers, Hynde sings actual words on the bridge.

I said child, child staring into the streetlight
Messed up child lonely boy tonight
Kick the wall turn the street and back again
Oh boy you’ve been forgotten

And with that, James Honeyman-Scott just totally and completely takes off: cramming about 5000 guitar solos into one, all skyrockets and pinwheels and air raid sirens and the end of the fucking world rolled into several bars of glorious noisy chaos that seems like it would be impossible to stop until it smashes headlong into THE RIFF and dissipates like a massive wave into a giant wall as Chrissie Hynde exclaims yet another dick-hardening “huuuuuuuuuhhhh!” before one last verse and chorus.
All in all, “The Wait” is an utterly tremendous and incredibly exciting piece of music, and the fact that it came after five other stunners, each one completely different from the others and yet all infused with everything I loved about rock and roll back then — and everything I still love about it — meant that it didn’t even matter that the rest of the album wasn’t quite as ovaries-to-the-wall powerful for it to totally and completely wipe me out.  From: https://medialoper.com/certain-songs-1630-pretenders-the-wait/

Talking Heads - Crosseyed And Painless

I was surprised to learn that Talking Heads made a video for “Crosseyed and Painless”. It was directed by Toni Basil, who also directed the “Once in a Lifetime” video, and briefly dated David Byrne. The band does not appear in the video; instead, it features an excellent breakdance crew, the Electric Boogaloos. (They are unrelated to the movie or the fascist movement.) It’s interesting that the video edit of the song doubles the length of the rap verse. It’s also interesting that at 3:33, Skeeter Rabbit does the moonwalk, two years before Michael Jackson did it at the Motown 25th anniversary show. The philosopher Timothy Morton, who coined the term “hyperobject,” wrote an entire book chapter about the song and its video. As you might expect from cultural criticism by a philosopher, it is very heavy and full of esoteric language, but I will do my best.

    The video stages the proximity of poor African Americans to the broken tools of modernity, far from valorizing their immiseration, offers a way to think black environmental consciousness as symptomatic of and central to the emerging ecological age, the age of global warming (p. 167).

As the William Gibson quote goes, “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

    This video and the song are part of the anthem of global anxiety, the overwhelming sensation that underlies ecological thinking like a note that no one wants to hear, a certain high-frequency hum like the sound of a malfunctioning electric pylon (p. 168).

This is definitely how I experience climate anxiety.

    “Crosseyed and Painless” is a superb example of funk, a broken blues without a story, without that four-chord trick, that twelve-bar narrative, just popping in and out, locking into that first section, like a needle stuck in the groove of a broken record. Funk evokes the repetition compulsion, returning again and again to the same part of the city, like Freud in his essay on the uncanny, over and over again to the same strange part of town, the part that is your home, made stranger by the constant popping dislocation of the groove. Funk burrows into that initial moment, the beginning of the blues sequence—the basic unhappiness that spawns the ironic enjoyment, the blue note. That chorus-like section that tries to fly from the sickening lurch of the verse, and seems for a few seconds to float above it, before descending back to uncanny home base, like a bird with a broken wing. No escape velocity can be achieved from the horrible gravity of the song, the centripetal torque emitted by the sharpened, shortened blues on heavy rotation (p. 170).

It’s not a musicologically well-supported idea that funk comes from the first four bars of the twelve-bar blues; it’s probably the other way around. However, what I think Morton is saying is that for Talking Heads in 1980, twelve-bar blues would have been the familiar template, and funk would have felt like looping the first four bars.

    Haunted by illusion, lies, anxiety, the black working class knows the secret life of things, the way they are in excess of their social role. Yet inner space does not provide a refuge from the outer world. There is no escape from this implicitly racist environmentality: The feeling returns / Whenever we close our eyes. Race, environment, nonhuman things are intertwined (p. 175).

Environmental racism is real. David Byrne gets into that with his bicycle activism, and in his book about biking around different world cities.

    Between the flattened seventh and the tonic note of the funk sequence, there is nothing, not even nothing—an oukontic nothing, like the forbidden gap between electron levels, which an electron jumps across when excited by a photon in the crystal lattice on a phosphor screen (p. 181).

“Oukontic” means absolute, as opposed to relative. Thinking of scale degrees as quantum modes of vibration is a rich and generative analogy. The flat seventh in blues probably arose from the seventh harmonic in the natural overtone series.

    The horrible familiarity and strangeness of anxiety, its uncanny creepiness that seems to lurk just off of the edge of our perception like a car in a driveway beside the street we’re walking on, or a car approaching in your wing mirror. U.S. car wing mirrors are object-oriented ontologists: they say, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” The trouble with ecology is that it brings everything too close. Things become vivid, yet unreal, at the very same time and for the very same reasons (p. 185).

How much of any of this might have been in David Byrne’s mind, or any of the other Talking Heads, or Brian Eno or Toni Basil or the Electric Boogaloos? Maybe not consciously, for any of them, but unconsciously, it would make sense. The whole point of the Talking Heads aesthetic is to sneak intuition around the barrier of the conscious intentional mind.  

From: https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2022/crosseyed-and-painless/

Cellar Darling - Dance

To get the obvious out of the way immediately, how are you all feeling as the release date of your debut is coming up?

Anna: Great! I’m exhausted, but in a positive way. We gave it our all, we poured a lot of energy and creativity into this album.

Merlin: We’ve worked on this album non-stop since the day we started the band, pretty much exactly one year ago. I would say it’s probably the most important release of our lives; at least it is for me. So there is certainly much anticipation!

How did you form your partnership with Nuclear Blast, and how is it going so far?

Merlin: As you might know, we’ve worked with Nuclear Blast with our previous band for nearly a decade already – we knew they have an outstanding team, and we knew they’d be among the first we would reach out to.

Anna: We sent them the two tracks we released last year (“Challenge” and “Fire, Wind & Earth”) and they immediately wanted to sign us. It’s going great, we’re very happy to work with them again.

Have you, at any point, considered adding more members to your band, or why have you decided to keep it as just the three of you? The obvious “missing link,” so to speak, would be a bassist.

Anna: No, Cellar Darling is the three of us and it works perfectly this way. Ivo is an amazing bassist, plays bass on the album and we’ll work with session musicians for live shows.

Merlin: I think a big part of the strength of this band is that we’ve been recording and touring together for years – we know what works, we know we work, and this established and proven symbiosis lies very much at the core of “This is the Sound,” too.

You played with Amorphis and Anneke van Giersbergen at the end of last year – what were some of the highlights? Were there any Spinal Tap moments worth sharing?

Anna: The first show with Amorphis was a bit shaky because of technical problems we had, but we still enjoyed the show and received positive feedback. The show supporting Anneke was much better and the entire trip was basically just one huge party. We traveled with a tour bus and brought all my friends along. Why? Because Amsterdam!

How does it feel to have so few people on stage, as compared to before?

Anna: Definitely very different, I think every person feels like they’re more “on display” than before. But that can also be a good thing, a lot of focus comes with it.

Ivo: It’s challenging too, but in a good way. Besides having more space on stage, it also opens up new possibilities for the live show.

Merlin: For me, there is more room for musicality; I can focus fully on what everyone else on stage is doing, and vice versa.

I’m not sure how the song-writing process went with Eluveitie, but I suppose it’s safe to assume that Chrigel was largely in charge? What differences, both positive and negative, did you notice now, working as a smaller collective?

Anna: Yes, Chrigel was the main songwriter in Eluveitie, with Ivo contributing a lot of riffs and songs and myself also being involved here and there. Cellar Darling songs are written collaboratively, based on ideas from Ivo or myself. It’s a group effort and you can hear that our songs are a symbiosis of us three and not one mastermind with a backing band. We experiment a lot in the rehearsal room and often also arrange whole songs together.

Merlin: From the very first Cellar Darling rehearsal, we played and explored ideas together in the same room—something which was entirely new for all of us, and something which I’ve enjoyed tremendously. We had been wanting to explore this way of working for some time, and it was quite surprising just how naturally it worked for us. The song we worked on during that first rehearsal actually made it on the album, albeit after many iterations!

How did it feel to work with so many fewer instruments now?

Anna: I don’t really perceive it as so much less to be honest. Besides the normal band line-up there’s the hurdy-gurdy, flute, strings, piano & even an Uilleann pipe on the album. But of course, our music focuses on what three people play and that is less, but I think it’s great.

Does your current music feel simplistic in any way to you by comparison? And if so, is that a nice change, or is it a bit strange?

Anna: Not at all actually, I think there’s much more variety in our arrangements. Fewer instruments does not equal simple.

Ivo: It’s not strange at all. Having fewer instruments also means that each instrument has more focus, which doesn’t make the songwriting process any easier or more simplistic. In fact, this approach feels more natural to me instead of having a checklist of instruments which have to be on every song.

Do you feel as though the lyrics carry more power with fewer instruments backing them?

Anna: That’s not really something I’ve thought about… we just write music, impulsively, and that results in something. Too much thinking would ruin that magical process.

I’ve noticed that your music is extremely catchy; for example, “Challenge” gets stuck in my head every time I think about it, let alone listen to it. Do you write that intent in mind, or is it just a pleasant side effect of the process?

Anna: That’s nice to hear! I never write music with any intent, it just happens naturally.

Ivo: The music I write mostly starts with a certain mood I am currently in; it’s not something I can control on my own. We don’t sit down and “plan” to make catchy melodies, they just evolve during the writing process.

Many bands travel the self-titled road for their debut – how did you come up with “This is the Sound” for the album title (which I assume is taken from the line in “Challenge”)?

Anna: We had a long list of album title candidates and like with most things, we went with the option that just felt right. “This is the Sound” is a statement to ourselves – we found our sound with this album and we’re thrilled about that.

Anna has said in other interviews that she never directly addresses things in her lyrics (like the story of eating too much ice cream)—are there any stories behind songs on the album that are similarly metaphorical? And what might the original stories/inspirations be, if you don’t mind sharing?

Anna: I think pretty much all songs on this album are metaphorical. I noticed at the end of our songwriting sessions that a lot of songs deal with “the end” in some way or another, whether that is in the form of death or the apocalypse… I guess I wrote about those topics because I was still processing the Eluveitie split without fully realizing it. It’s so interesting how our mind can tell us things and give creative hints like that. Another track that is very personal is “Redemption.” It’s about the people we love, yet manage to hurt, and the regret that comes with it. I turned it into a story about a magical moor that can take you in and give birth to you again as a new person. But with a price.

Are there any overarching themes or concepts on the album, or is each song an individual element? Is there any message you were trying to get across with the music or lyrics? What is the album “about,” if anything?

Anna: There is no lyrical concept; each song tells it’s own story. The only concept being the way the lyrics are written, as stories. I want the listener to drift off into another world, see pictures and colors. Like I do when I’m composing them, or when I’m listening to music that I like. My message is to use your imagination; it’s the most valuable and powerful thing you have.

The length of your songs is surprisingly varied—“Water” is a mere 1:54 minutes, while “Hedonia” is 7:29—how did some songs end up so short, while others were so long?

Anna: Song lengths are never intentional, they just happen naturally. Here once again we just do what feels right to us.

Finally, the phrase “cellar door” has, for many, many years (a century even), been considered to be one of the most beautiful phrases in the English language. Do you agree, and do you think that “Cellar Darling” has a similar beauty, as it is phonetically similar?

Anna: I do actually! I’ve always loved the combination of words, there’s something about them. Cellar is dark and Darling is light, like our music.

From: https://www.bearwiseman.com/off-the-record-interviews/off-the-record-with-cellar-darling

Strawbs - Grave New World Promo Film 1972

Grave New World - the movie. Strawbs' epic album Grave New World was one of the first full-length rock videos, made in 1972, long before the ground-breaking "Bohemian Rhapsody" and latterly MTV made it essential for single releases to have videos to accompany them. The film was directed by Steve Turner, was recorded at Television International's studios in London in 1972. The video made intensive use of the then new technique of colour separation overlay, or chroma-keying as it is now known. The images generated at the Whitfield Street studio were recorded at Tvi's editing facility in Windmill Street. The film was edited by Barry Stevens who later edited the promo for Bohemian Rhapsody. The edited master was then transferred via an optical printed to 35mm film stock for projection at cinemas, a hugely expensive operation even today.
I saw it as a double bill some time after its initial release, coupled with either Emerson Lake & Palmer's Pictures At An Exhibition, or Pink Floyd Live In Pompeii. The Cousins/Hooper/Ford/Hudson/Weaver line-up perform most of the tracks from GNW, against a variety of settings - gogo dancers, swirling psychedelia, and most notably - in the case of the stunning "New World" - some powerful and frankly disturbing images of riots, wars and famine, which underline the song's relevance not just to the troubles in Northern Ireland which inspired it, but to all forms of human suffering.  From: https://www.strawbsweb.co.uk/video/tokyo/tokyo.asp

The Electric Crayon Set - Calling on the Cards

They wish it could 1967 again! But don’t we all? They even refer to XTC and Martin Newell as to their future, and therefore at the moment (of the imaginary 1967) non-existing influences, and as for their own “contemporary” ones, for an observer that’s in the know, the name of the band inspired by the fifth (dimension?) one of the Rubble series, featuring The (pre-Creation) Mark Four, The Poets, The Game, The Attack, Fire and the like, makes it all clear enough.
Both of the tracks from last year’s promo CD single Don’t Make Me Squeeze Yar Balls, Man … (reviewed elsewhere on these pages) are present, with the Blossom Toes kind of a Britsike quirk of Good Girl, now at least equalled if not bettered with the album’s opening title tune, put through an additional XTC filer, the same one that the popsike pair of Spacedust and Black Prince are being put through.
Likewise, the cockney-ish Britpop of the Small Faces-through-Modernlife-era-Blur kind, of the other single track These Nights Are Supernatural is being accompanied with Kitty Ruxpin, while there’s also some equally slightlydelic Drake-meets-Donovan-like folky stuff to be heard in Morning Of Magicians, as well as some upbeat blue-eyed soul in Key To The Sacred Pattern, with some “singing-bird-like” 12-string fills thrown in, just for the jangle of it... and also, I’d like to think that they seem to have been paying attention to my previous review, and therefore giving a much more serious thought to the artwork, here displaying their West Ham United admiration in spite of the several seas between them.  From: https://popdiggers.com/the-electric-crayon-set-what-a-rotter-of-a-day/

Poco - Make Me Smile

Can I be honest? I chose to review Poco’s 1969 debut Pickin’ Up the Pieces based solely on its cover. Sure it’s an excellent LP and pioneering work of country rock, but it’s the cover that truly matters to me because there’s a great story behind it. So here goes.
Seems bassist Randy Meisner–who would shortly thereafter become a founding member of the Eagles–quit the band in a royal snit after Richie Furay and Jim Messina (both formerly of Buffalo Springfield) excluded him from participating in the album’s final mix. This left Poco in a rather awkward position when it came to the painting of the band’s members meant to grace the album cover. Poco might have done any number of things to remedy this situation, the most obvious and simple one being to scrap the cover and come up with a new one. Instead they opted to air brush poor Randy from the cover Josef Stalin style–and replace him with a dog.
I’ve done a bit of research on said pooch, and he’s rather a mystery. I’ve had no luck contacting him through my many musician and record company connections, and I could find no evidence that he was paid for his role as stand-in. Nor was I able to determine if he actually played on the album. I hear no barking, which isn’t to say they buried him way back in the vocal mix. He may also have played bass. Should you happen to run into him tell him to give me a ring. I’d love to know how he’s doing.
Pickin’ Up the Pieces is often placed alongside The Byrds 1968 LP Sweetheart of the Rodeo as a seminal work of what would soon become known as country rock, but there are critical differences between the two. Sweetheart of the Rodeo included only two Byrds’ originals; Pickin’ Up the Pieces is composed solely of Poco originals. The Byrds sought inspiration from the past, paying homage to their country forebears, and it lends their music an old-timely hillbilly sound. Poco, on the other hand, were looking forward to a future that would include such studio slicks as the Eagles and Pure Prairie League.
Another key distinction between the two bands can only be called soul. Gram Parsons oozed the stuff, and it characterizes Sweetheart of the Rodeo every bit as much as The Byrd’s choice of traditional songs. Pickin’ Up the Pieces is a lot of things–nearly all of them good–but it’s light of weight and short on deep feeling.
Yet another difference in the two lies in purity of sound. The Byrds’ kept things redneck bar simple, the Poco of Pickin’ Up the Pieces less so. The musicians are top notch, the lush vocal harmonies give Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young a run for their money, and you get the typical array of traditional country instruments (pedal steel guitar, banjo, and dobro). But you also get horns (on “Nobody’s Fool and “Tomorrow”), strings (on the latter cut) and female backing vocalists on “Oh Yeah.” You’ll find no such fancy frills on Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Such caveats and dog aside, Pickin’ Up the Pieces offers up an excellent array of songs. Pickers and grinners include the sunny title track, the gimcrack instrumental “Grand Junction,” and a pair of who-cares-if-you-split numbers in “Consequently So Long” and“Just If It Happens, Yes Indeed,” The LP also comes with a pair of slow and mournful tunes. “Tomorrow” may fall short of The Byrds lovely beyond words “Hickory Wind” in the high and lonesome department but it’s a winner nonetheless, while “First Love” is a real tearjerker thanks in large part to Furay’s vocals. Pickin’ Up the Pieces also includes the electric numbers “Calico Lady” and the fuzz-guitar powered rocker “Short-Changed.”
In the end it doesn’t much matter whether Pickin’ Up the Pieces is less pure an example of what Gram Parsons’ dubbed Cosmic American Music than Sweetheart of the Rodeo. An LP should be judged on its merits, and Pickin’ Up the Pieces is a solid collection of well-constructed, perfectly executed country rockers. As I’m sure the dog on the cover would tell you if only he’d get in touch and agree to an interview.  From: https://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/graded-on-a-curve-poco-pickin-up-the-pieces-2/

Mahalia Barnes & The Soul Mates - He Was a Big Freak (Betty Davis cover)

It’s one of life’s ironies that an artist as independent and ahead of her time as Betty Davis (Mabry) is today remembered mostly for her brief marriage to Miles Davis, and for having transformed the trumpeter in record time from Italian suited jazzer to psychedelically garbed imbiber of Bitches Brew. (Davis credited Betty with introducing him both to hip threads and the sounds of Hendrix, Sly Stone, and others.) Chump change indeed for a singer, songwriter, model/fashionista, and provocateur who was a Greenwich Village scene maker while still in her teens. She wrote “Uptown (To Harlem)” for the Chambers Brothers, and later went on to release three unheralded records of low-down ‘70s funk whose open sexual attitudes prefigured later, more commercially successful efforts by Rick James, Prince, and Madonna.
Raunchy, uncompromising and not really in the mood to take crap from anyone, it seems that Betty was a bit too much, even for the sleazy ’70s. Album covers which ruled out her being confused with Joni Mitchell and song titles with lyrics to match, such as “If I’m in Luck, I Might Get Picked Up” and “He’s a Big Freak”, got her on the wrong side of the Religious Right, the NAACP, and feminists. In some cases, she got banned from the airwaves. By 1979, her recording career was finished and until recently she was little more than a rock footnote.
Returning to life’s ironies, however, the legacy of a woman who sang so often of pleasures down under has received a boost from just that location. Teaming up with American blues guitar virtuoso Joe Bonamassa, Australian powerhouse vocalist Mahalia Barnes (daughter of Australian Rock legend Jimmy Barnes) and her ace band the Soul Mates have revisited 12 tracks culled from Davis’s three releases: her self-titled 1973 debut, They Say I’m Different from a year later, and 1975’s Nasty Gal. The project reportedly took flight after Barnes played some vintage Betty for producer Kevin Shirley while working with him on her Dad’s Hindsight record. Shirley dug what he heard, and with a producer’s smarts he likely saw a talented songwriter ripe for rediscovery. In a masterstroke, he then flew Bonamassa down to Sydney to lend a hand. Three days of recording later Ooh Yea! – The Betty Davis Songbook was good to go.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/190746-mahalia-barnes-the-soul-mates-featuring-joe-bonamassa-ooh-yea-the-be-2495559198.html

 

Nil Lara - Crawl

Nil Lara doesn't know where he is. He's not even quite sure what state he's in. "Nevada?" he screams into the phone when pressed for his exact location. "California?" This is what it's been like recently for Lara, who, it turns out, really doesn't know where he is during a midtour phone interview. Since putting the finishing touches on his self-titled major-label debut a few months ago, Miami's favorite son has been mapping new territory with a dive-bomb tour across the U.S. "I do know one thing," Lara says, his velvety voice suddenly turning devilish. "We're exactly 50 miles from the world's biggest roller coaster. Now that should be a blast."
It's an apt time to catch up with the 31-year-old dervish. If all goes as planned, the release next week of his new disc on Metro Blue, a start-up subsidiary of Blue Note Records that's distributed by Capitol, will put the singer/songwriter on the ultimate roller coaster: national, maybe international, fame. Although local fans have been swarming Lara's club shows for years, and area critics have long touted him as South Florida's artist most likely to succeed, Lara himself remains characteristically standoffish on the topic of fame and success. "If that happens, fine," he mutters. "But it's not something I'm reaching for. The music comes first. Everything else is shit."
That kind of artistic purism comes naturally to Lara, who spent much of his youth in Venezuela playing traditional South American music with his family and neighborhood friends, and giving little thought to pursuing a career in entertainment. While still in his teens, he and his Cuban-American parents and two brothers moved to Miami. In the mid-Eighties, Lara attended the University of Miami and fronted a rock band called K.R.U., which released two indie albums and relocated temporarily to New York City before disbanding. Upon his return to Miami, Lara formed Beluga Blue and released two independent discs: the 1994 album My First Child and a follow-up EP The Monkey.
A gushing February 1994 article in Billboard about My First Child triggered a scramble to sign Lara, whose fusion of Cuban and American pop and virtuosic voice has drawn comparisons to Elton John, Van Morrison, Billy Joel, and Paul Simon. No fewer than four labels began vying for his talents. "Once the article came out it was like everyone jumped on the bandwagon," Lara recalls. "They all wanted a piece of this new, bicultural thing that I'd been doing all my life." He took meetings with Miami music mogul Emilio Estefan, was schmoozed by honchos from Atlantic, and was courted by David Byrne, who flew to Miami in hope of signing Lara to his Warner Brothers imprimatur, Luaka Bop, a respected world-music label known for its eye-opening reissues as well as its contemporary releases by artists from Peru, Brazil, and Cuba. After all the wining and dining, Lara settled on Metro Blue. "They understood what I was about," he explains of his signing with the newcomer label. I told them, 'Look, I'm an artist and you've got to let me do my thing.' And their response was, 'Hey, that's why we want you.'"
The resulting disc, coproduced by Lara and Susan Rogers (whose previous credits include Byrne and Michael Penn), suggests the label made good on its word. It's his strongest work to date: The eleven songs showcase Lara's phenomenal ability to incorporate traditional Afro-Caribbean instruments and rhythms into accessible and instantly hummable pop. Six of the eleven songs appeared previously on Lara's Beluga Blue discs, but all of them -- save the lovely acoustic ballad "Vida Mas Simple" -- were re-recorded for his Metro Blue outing. And while the arrangements of these new versions have been pared down ("Strings and skins with no extra garbage" is how he describes the album), Lara has introduced a fleet of folkloric instruments into the mix. The layers of guitar that propelled his previous recording of the song "My First Child" are gone, replaced by spicy percussion generated by a half-dozen instruments, including the shaker, cabasa, beads, and a two-headed drum called the bata. The shimmering anthem "I Will Be Free" opens with the dulcet tones of Lara tickling a 1959 Philharmonic organ before building to a thunderous bata-fueled climax. The hypnotic organ sounds almost like a hurdy-gurdy on a smartly syncopated revamp of the mordant "Money Makes the Monkey Dance."
Lara himself plays more than a dozen instruments on the album, primarily the cautro (a four-stringed Venezuelan guitar Lara began strumming at age eight) and the tres, a Cuban guitar that he sometimes equips with bass strings for a more resonant sound. On "Fighting for My Love," Lara plays an instrument of his own invention: a National Triolian tres, basically a steel-bodied Dobro with tres strings, which adds an undulating zip to the song's jaunty tempo.
A second Dobro-tres hybrid -- with a wood, rather than a steel body -- appears on "Bar cents," Lara's mournful tribute to his late conguero, Florencio Bar cents. The song showcases Lara's expressive tenor, an instrument capable of leaping registers with grace and dipping low for throaty howls. His Spanish lyrics convey the debt he owes to Bar cents, Lara's spiritual mentor until he passed away in 1994: "La cara me queda fria/Tu sangre llena la mia" ("My face grows cold/Your blood fills mine").
With the exception of versatile drummer David Goodstein, Lara has parted ways, amicably, with the musicians who backed him in Beluga Blue (two of whom have toured recently with Jon Secada). Beluga guitarist Mark Vuksanovic, however, makes a delightful cameo on "Baby," turning in some bluesy Dobro slide work that chugs around Lara's gutsy belting. "Crawl," another new offering, is an oddly joyous ode to addiction that, like many Lara compositions, seamlessly combines English lyrics with a slangy Spanish refrain. Both songs draw from the rich tradition of Cuban son, the bedrock for nearly all of that nation's popular music. "Bleeding," a chiming mainstream rocker, essays the toll exacted by an unbalanced romance. The album closes with the primal-thumping "Mama's Chant," a Lara classic from his Miami nightclub days. Back then the song would often veer off into improv excursions that incorporated Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" and Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." The song has been streamlined here, yet it still tramples into a climactic riot of percussion, with Lara chanting in time to his own throbbing slide bass.
To help prepare American radio for Lara's Latin-rock fusion, Metro Blue has shipped a four-song sampler ("Bleeding," "Baby," "Money Makes the Monkey Dance," and "Fighting for My Love") to Adult Album Alternative stations. Their response will determine which of these cuts will be pitched as the album's first single. "They sent mostly stuff in English, so radio doesn't get misled and think we're just a Latin thing," Lara notes. "Obviously, we don't want to get labeled. I mean, in the end who cares where the fuck the music comes from?" Banking on crossover popularity in Spain and Latin America, Metro Blue will also be promoting a version of Lara's debut there that will feature two new Spanish-language cuts not included on the domestic edition: "Amor a Ti" and "Bonifacio," the latter dedicated to Lara's grandfather.  From: https://www.miaminewtimes.com/music/good-enough-for-mama-6361616

Red Sky July - Two Magicians

Red Sky July is the new project from three well-respected and lauded musicians. Consisting of husband and wife duo Ally McErlaine and Shelly Poole, and singer Charity Hair, Red Sky July is an entirely original debut album from a group with a phenomenal pedigree, all of whom have been steeped in music for as long as they can remember. With her sister Karen, Shelly Poole was one half of the million-selling duo Alisha’s Attic. The daughter of famed ‘60s artist Brian Poole, music was always around Shelly as a young child and she learned to read and compose music at a very early age. Since the band’s split in 2003 Shelly has gone on to become a successful songwriter for other artists, as well as releasing a solo album ‘Hard Time For The Dreamer.’
Ally McErlaine has had a guitar in his hand for most of his adult life. Sitting in his bedroom as a teenager and teaching himself how to play along to his favourite records, Ally joined Texas when he was just 17. He has been touring with them since 1988, selling over 15 million albums worldwide in the process. Ally and Shelly married in 2001.
Charity Hair hails from the small town of Plant City in Florida, and developed a love for playing music after being given a violin by her grandmother at the age of 8. Scouted by a modelling agency at the age of 18, Charity soon moved to London and ended up forming The Alice Band with two other girls she had met. It was during this time she first met Ally while performing on a TV show at the same time as Texas. Later she would become singer for The Ailerons, performing alongside drummer Dave Rowntree (Blur) – who had signed Shelly to his record label. Charity has previously performed at several of Shelly’s solo gigs, and the three have all kept in touch over the years, always wanting to work together but never quite finding the right moment or material until now.
Red Sky July came together to make music they love with no boundaries and expectations. It was set to be a 'soulfood' side project that would bring a few low key gigs and be a great contrast to their song writing day jobs. One day a week soon became five, and a group of songs with a hazy, folk-inflected sound soon found their way into shaping and becoming a whole album. The three of them then took these songs to Jazz Summers and Tim Parry at Big Life Management. With a roster of artists that includes Snow Patrol and The Verve, Summer and Parry were impressed and enlisted Rory Carlile to produce the entire album.
Yet there was a two-year break where the entire project was put on standby – Ally suffered a major brain aneurysm and was in a critical state for over a year. Finally reconvening last summer and drafting in new band member Mark Neary, Red Sky July were ready to resume where they left off. Relocating to Bristol, they recorded the album live to capture the sense of danger and fragility that playing together in the same room at the same time brings.
Red Sky July is an astonishingly assured debut album, born out of the pleasure and satisfaction of three like-minded souls creating exactly the music they hear in their heads. That such a project can touch universally only testifies to their creative spirit and abilities.  From: http://www.proper-records.co.uk/artists/red-sky-july/

Marillion - Lavender Blue

"Lavender" is a song by the British neo-prog band Marillion. It was released as the second single from their 1985 UK number one concept album Misplaced Childhood. The follow-up to the UK number two hit "Kayleigh", the song was their second Top Five UK hit. As with all Marillion albums and singles between 1982 and 1988, the cover art was created by Mark Wilkinson.
The song features a number of verses that are reminiscent of the folk song "Lavender's Blue". The song forms part of the concept of the Misplaced Childhood album. Like "Kayleigh" it is a love song, but whereas "Kayleigh" was about the failure of an adult relationship, "Lavender" recalls the innocence of childhood; The childhood theme also brought up the idea of utilising an old children's song and "Lavender" was an obvious contender as one of the original pop songs of its time. The opening lines "I was walking in the park dreaming of a spark, when I heard the sprinklers whisper, shimmer in the haze of summer lawns" deliberately recall the title track of Joni Mitchell's album The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
Unusually for a rock song from the mid-1980s, "Lavender" features a traditional grand piano rather than an electronic keyboard or electric piano. In the music video, keyboardist Mark Kelly is seen playing a Bechstein but the original sleeve notes of the Misplaced Childhood album state that a Bösendorfer was used for the recording.
On the album Misplaced Childhood, "Lavender" is a short track of barely two and a half minutes, forming part of a longer suite that continues into the likewise multi-portioned track "Bitter Suite", which repeats Lavender's musical motif at the end. In order to be suitable for a single release, the track therefore needed to be re-arranged and extended. As a result, the 7" version is significantly longer than the album version (3:40 as opposed to 2:27), whereas the 12" version – entitled "Lavender Blue" – is 4:18.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_(Marillion_song)  

June Rich - Wait It's U

WXPN will welcome June Rich to the Ardmore Music Hall on June 20th. The folk rock band was integral in the local music scene of the nineties, releasing two records and performing at the opening night of the Electric Factory in 1996.
The band’s list of accolades continued with a Philadelphia Magazine Best Band in Philadelphia award, a Folk Fest main stage slot (the only local band to fill that position in 1996), a performance on Mountain Stage and numerous other festival appearances. In anticipation of this reunion, which marks the 20th anniversary of their self-titled debut LP, bassist Garry Lee, singer/guitarist Vanida Gail and guitarist Allen James looked back on the beginning of their career:
“Back in 1994-95, there was a burgeoning music scene that was centered around Manayunk and specifically the Grape Street Pub,” said Lee. “It was the center for a lot of up-and-coming singer-songwriters and for bands at the time.”
“Who can really say why anything catches fire? I have no idea,” added Gail. “I just know we were having a blast onstage, just singing together. The band was sounding great. We were all just having fun and maybe the audience felt that.” As for the idea of reuniting, James said “I’m totally looking forward to it” and added, “as far as I understand, there are going to be a couple of new tunes and it’s always good to have something new.”  From: https://xpn.org/2015/04/28/june-rich-reunion/

Crypt Trip - To Be Whole

For some in the music world, the sixties never really ended and this is especially true with Crypt Trip’s Haze Country. Both a throwback and refreshing, Haze Country (Heavy Psych Sounds) lets us sit back and relive the good old days of psychedelics, marijuana and hippie Shenanigans. Even from the album cover: the aesthetic and nostalgic tinged photograph of the band mounted on motorbikes, it really does feel like this record was lost in time and it’s only just been rediscovered in your Dad’s cupboard of old LPs.
What separates Crypt Trip from other nostalgia-tinged acts such as Greta Van Fleet is that Crypt Trip aren’t purely imitating past successful acts and hoping it sells today due to the listening publics forgetfulness of musical history: everything on Haze Country is genuine and, although clearly influenced by that era, it’s not a rip off by any stretch of the imagination.
With long sixties improvisational-inspired instrumental passages, timeless-sounding riffs, gruff raw vocals and genuine musicality, Crypt Trip are the real deal. Combining Southern Rock characteristics with a psychedelic-infused mentality, songs like ‘Hard Times’, ‘Free Rain’ and ‘Wordshot’, Haze Country balances between being Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Beatles at the same time which a dream-like combination especially when put together in such a unique package.
’16 Ounce Blues’ and ‘Pastures’ sound like they should be playing in an old western saloon perched in the middle of the desert as the sun slowly sets on the barren plains surrounding them. It’s idyllic, to say the least, and the band’s time machine is fully captivating especially within these two songs.
So, if you find yourself in an open top car in the middle of southern USA and you’re looking to have a soundtrack to your escape from your small town, let Crypt Trip’s Haze Country jump in the wagon, drive for hours and never look back.  From: https://ghostcultmag.com/album-review-crypt-trip-haze-country-heavy-psych-sounds/